Sci/tech tidbits in and around New Hampshire
Recent patents in New Hampshire
By Targeted News Service: DEKA Products of Manchester has been assigned an ornamental design patent (D757,272) developed by two co-inventors for an ornamental design for a “display screen with vertically centered text lines.” The co-inventors are Gregory Distler of...
CRISPR can edit RNA, not just DNA
CRISPR, the gene-editing method that is revolutionizing biology and possibly medicine, is so important that it was the topic of two Science Cafes this year, in both Concord and Nashua, but it's also quite new and still being analyzed. As the NY Times reports: On...
Dead leaves, more than snow, help ticks over-winter
We all like to think that our winters will kill off ticks, but it doesn't - part of the reason that Lyme disease has spread so much in New England. But why doesn't it? Because the ticks are good at finding shelter, according to a study that the Portland Press has...
How about some good news: U.S. teen birth rate is plummeting
How about some good news for a change: The U.S. teen birth rate (that is, rate of women age 19 or less who have babies) has fallen by more than half in a decade and by two-thirds - two-thirds! - since it peaked in 1991. Nobody's entirely sure why, but this Vox piece...
Native brook trout in downtown Manchester? Who knew?!?
There a great piece by Mark Hayward of the Union-Leader about native brook trout being found in muddy little urban stream in Manchester. Read it here; it's very good: This is a neighborhood where the word forest is best used metaphorically to describe the hot asphalt,...
Turning a gravel pit into a hydroponics greenhouse; does that make sense?
There's a debate about how much sense it makes to grow crops indoors: It allows you to create food in places that may not be otherwise of use, and grow food closer to urban areas where people are - which is good - but it requires energy to light and energy to build...
The endlessly fascinating falcon webcam
I can't get enough of the New Hampshire Audubon peregrine falcon webcam. Great video, from two perspectives. The four babies are growing up; they're currently in their awkward preteen phase, their white fluff being replaced by black feathers. It's really ugly; the...
What is This Thing Called Math?
Next week is a packed one for Science Cafe in New Hampshire - there's a special discussion in Laconia on Monday about opioid abuse, and Science Cafe Concord on Tuesday discussion the science of brewing. And then on Wednesday, I'm part of something different, a wicked...
Does rooftop solar (a) help, (b) hurt or (c) not affect home sales?
UPDATE: Fannie Mae offers very low cost financing for new PV on homes. My Monitor column today ponders the effect that rooftop solar has on buying and selling houses. It's mostly anecdotal because there isn't good data yet, especially not for New Hampshire, but you've...
”Superbug” resistant to all – all – antibiotics makes it to the U.S.
UPDATE: Local hospitals are on the alert. Forget politics and crime and even the Golden State Warriors' dilemma. The biggest news yesterday was the discovery in the U.S. of bacteria carrying the gene that makes them resistant to all antiboitics. As Boston Globe's...
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